Born and raised in California, Veronica has 30+ years of travel experience that she’s translated into an informative YouTube series about all the Golden State has to offer. Ever wondered what the best strategy is for tackling Disneyland? Planning a trip to San Diego and want advice about must-do sites and activities? Think you want to visit Yosemite but want a preview of the best wilderness hiking trails? Answer any of these questions and more with Veronica’s detailed and digestible travel videos, with more than 150 video reviews to watch.

Here are a few words from Veronica:

California is one of the most diverse and wonderful places in the world! We have sandy beaches, snow-capped mountains, breathtaking national forests, and vast stretches of lonely desert. After 20 years as an editor and writer for magazines, books and newspapers, I decided to try something new. In 2007, Tim Carter of AsktheBuilder.com suggested that we start a YouTube channel. That weekend, my husband, Jason, and I went to the local camera store and bought a cheap digital video camera, tripod and Radio Shack mic. We began filming our favorite vacation spots and attractions throughout California... We want to thank the YouTube community and everyone who voted. You guys are awesome, and we couldn't have done it without your support!

If you’ve enjoyed this monthly On The Rise blog series and want to see more rising YouTube partners, check out our On The Rise Channel. Keep an eye out for next month’s blog post, as your channel may be the next one On The Rise!

Thursday, January 26, 2012

This week we’re kicking off our recurring Release Notes post for 2012, highlighting some of the most recent updates to YouTube. Our scrappy engineers have been hard at work to make your experience even better, and here’s what’s new.

New look for Browse

Today we're giving the Browse page a fresh look-and-feel, to help you find even more great Channels on YouTube. Alongside the top lists like Most Viewed Today, you can now discover and subscribe to more YouTube Channels on browse pages, which will then regularly update on your homepage. You can also discover more content under categories including Entertainment, People & Blogs, Science & Technology and more. You’ll find it all on YouTube.com/browse.

Video Editor with new features

We first announced the YouTube Video Editor back in June of 2010 and since then we’ve added dozens of features that we hope you’ve enjoyed. With the recent YouTube homepage update we felt it was time to give the Video Editor a visual overhaul, as well as adding a cool new timeline, easier clip trimming and a moving playhead. Head over to YouTube.com/editor to see the changes. Here’s a shot of what it looks like:

Video Manager with oldies and new goodies

We’ve listened to your feedback from the Video Managerupdate in December, and have a bunch of new features and improvements. Along with a visual update, the Video Manager includes search history, and an improved display of scheduled uploads and claimed videos. You also wanted us to add back in the likes and dislikes statistics as well as sorting videos by popularity, so those features have returned. This will be rolling out over the next few days, and here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

We are ready to proceed with removing closed accounts from all user subscriber counts on Thursday, February 9th. A mentioned previously, all users will see a one-time adjustment to their total subscriber counts. For further details about how this affects your channel, you should view your YouTube Analytics "Subscribers" reports.

-----------------------------------------

UPDATE (1/11/12):We will be holding off on the single day adjustment (the January 12th date is being postponed) until we can address some discrepancies we found in synchronizing the public counts with YouTube Analytics. Everyone involved in this project is determined to ensure that this change is clearly understood by users, so we will postpone the single day adjustment until we can ensure that both the public count and YouTube Analytics data are consistent and unambiguous. We will let everyone know once we have a firm date in mind.
However, the enhanced techniques for despamming new subscriptions will be implemented as scheduled (tomorrow), as there are no such complications. We will continue to keep everyone up to date on how this develops.-----------------------------------------1/10/12

At YouTube, we take the accuracy of subscriber counts seriously. Subscriber counts are a reflection of a creator’s level of engagement with viewers, and a serious source of pride in the community. Many creators also use subscriber counts to measure their expectations for how many views their new videos should receive, by comparing total subscriber counts to number of views received from subscription sources inYouTube Analytics.

As a result, we are enhancing our efforts to ensure that all subscriber counts are as accurate as possible. On January 12th, we will take the following steps to improve the quality and integrity of subscriber counts across the site:

Remove inactive and closed accounts from total subscriber counts. We will remove all such accounts from subscriber numbers on January 12th, and continually update subscriber counts as subscribers become inactive or close their accounts.

Improve techniques for preventing artificial inflation of subscriber counts.Recently, we’ve seen a rise in creative agencies and vendors that claim to increase subscribers while complying with the YouTube Terms of Service. In most cases, those claims are false; the purchase or gaming of subscribers is a violation of our Terms of Service. Accordingly, we are taking the following steps to prevent some users from artificially inflating their subscriber counts:

Effective January 12th, we will implement a more rigorous system that will prevent new subscriptions generated from these malicious sources from being added to subscriber counts.

Beginning January 12th, we will retroactively adjust subscriber counts to not include subscriptions generated by artificial sources on an ongoing basis.

Please note: While we are updating subscriber counts to remove such subscriptions from the totals, we will not stop delivering videos to these subscribers, even if they are artificially created accounts. This means that even if we mistakenly remove a subscriber from a subscription account as invalid, this will in no way affect your views.

By ensuring the quality of subscriber counts, we hope that this metric will be a more valuable data point for creators. Creators who have not attempted to inflate their subscriber counts should only see a limited drop--resulting from the removal of inactive and closed accounts--while users who have benefitted from abuse will get a reality check.David Boyle, YouTube Staff, recently watched "2012 Taipei 101 New Year Fireworks HD complete 台北101煙火 Taiwan 2011 / 2012 (UFO ?)."

On Tuesday, January 17th, the YouTube Partner Support team will be hosting a partner meet-up at YouTube Headquarters. During the meet-up, we'll be live streaming the latest episode of Partner Support Talks with.... featuring a YouTube partner answering questions submitted by YouTube users like you!In this episode, Partner Support Talks with...GloZell1, we'll sit down with the one and only GloZell to talk about how she's achieved success on YouTube. We'll also ask her YOUR questions, live, on the air.Is there something you'd like to ask GloZell about her YouTube history? Want her advice on best practices? You have until next Monday to submit your questions (and vote for others) here to be answered live:http://goo.gl/udXvjTune in towww.youtube.com/youtube at 4:30pm PST on January 17th to watch the show live! We'll also post the show on www.youtube.com/ytcreators after the show.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Happy 2012! The new year brings with it a new batch of talented YouTube partners for the January edition of our monthly On The Rise program.

For those new to the series, here’s how it works: we identify four YouTube Partners who are steadily growing but haven’t yet hit the 100,000 subscriber mark. You watch their videos, then vote for your favorite in the top right corner of this blog. The channel with the most votes at the end of the week will be featured on the YouTube homepageand videospage. In past months, winners like evmoneyTV and ThePortraitArt have seen growth in their audience and video engagement thanks to your support. This month we’re featuring four promising partners whose content is geared toward getting you moving - whether that means action sport stunts, gardening, fitness, or travel. You have until January 16th at 5pm PT to vote for your favorite channel, and the one with the most votes at the end of the week will secure the homepage feature on January 30th. AlliSportsIf you’re into action sports, you’ve probably heard of Alli: they promote various sports and tours for skateboarding, BMX, motocross, and snowboarding. Their channel features professional interviews as well as stunt tips and analysis.growingyourgreensEver considered - or attempted - growing your produce in your own backyard? Don’t let inexperience or an urban environment discourage you! John’s channel is full of tips for how to grow your own food at home.yogatodayBased in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, yogatoday produces instructional yoga videos set in pristine mountain locations. Whether or not you’ve tried yoga before, these informative video classes foster relaxation and a healthy lifestyle.CaliforniaTravelTipsCalifornia native Veronica Hill has made a career of promoting her home state, publishing reviews for restaurants, vacation spots, and more, all over the state. Her YouTube channel features videos of various locations, attractions, and travel tips to help locals and tourists alike navigate all California has to offer.If you’re interested in checking out more rising YouTube Partners, visit our On The Rise channel, which features nominees, trending partners and monthly blog winners. Devon Storbeck, YouTube Partner Support, recently watched “never a dull moment on the nyc subway.”

Friday, January 6, 2012

Viewcounts are incredibly important to us here at YouTube. They serve as a way to recognize and surface great content, and are one of the most scrutinized measures of popularity on YouTube. Careers have been made because of viewcounts - whether you’re simply making amusic video with friends oron the way back from the dentist, views matter.Since views are so important, it’s no surprise that there are companies whose entire business model is built on converting your cash into views. We understand that promotion can be a highly effective way to grow your audience, and we encourage you to promote your content on and off of YouTube. However, we want to be clear that paying for views obtained through some of these companies could very well be a violation of ourterms, and one that we take very seriously.So what do we mean exactly? Let’s get specific.What is a view?We consider a view to be an action users want to do. Generally, this means that they initiate the view; for example, they click on something they want to watch or decide not to skip something, and they watch it. Pretty straightforward, right?A view should be a metric that reflects genuine user interest. In other words, a viewer has a choice, and that choice determines whether or not we count something as a view. It shouldn’t be a gauge of how many people accidentally or unintentionally ended up watching your video.What isn’t ok?Services that attempt to gain views through automated means or that force or trick viewers into watching videos are not ok. This could be through a variety of means, including, among other things, deceptive layouts on third party websites that trick viewers into playing a video when they click unrelated elements on the page. It might also be serving up embedded videos instead of intended content, serving pop-unders, re-directing and/or a variety of other methods people use to try to inflate viewership.At the end of the day, anything that artificially increases the number of views, either through the use of automatic systems or by serving up videos to unsuspecting viewers, is against our terms. Videos and accounts that are found to be in violation of our terms may be closed down and removed from YouTube.Buyer bewareIf you are going to contract someone to help promote your content, it should be someone you absolutely trust, as you may be putting the fate of your channel (and your business on YouTube) in their hands. If they are using methods that aren’t within our terms, you will be the one to pay the price, as it will be your videos and your channel that get taken down. And don’t just take their word for it - ask the tough questions, find out how they promote your content and do your due diligence. Ultimately, you are responsible for knowing and abiding by our terms - this means understanding the nature of the traffic on your channel and making sure you are in compliance with our terms. Ignorance of bad traffic or other actions taken on your behalf may lead to your account being removed from YouTube.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

We've heard from creators over the past few days that some public viewcounts have been frozen. We're sorry for the issue and we're close to fixing it. In the meantime, here's what you need to know:

While the public viewcount is stuck, all your views are still being recorded, and are visible in YouTube Analytics.

AdSense impressions are not affected by this data backlog.

You should see the results of our fixes within the next couple of days, and until all public viewcount updates have occurred, YouTube Analytics remains the most timely and accurate source of views data.

Thank you for your patience with these fixes, and hope your 2012 is off to a great start.